Stap 2 - Laptop Upgrades You Can Do Yourself (2. Hard Drive)
2. Hard Drive:
Replacing a laptop's hard drive is almost always an uncomplicated affair, and the actual swap can be done in just a few minutes. Transferring the data from the old drive to the new one requires a little more planning, and typically takes an hour or so. This simple task is likely not only to give you more storage, but also to improve performance. We upgraded a 5400-rpm, 120GB drive to a 7200-rpm, 200GB model, raising the system's WorldBench 6 score from 57 to 61.Hard drives are usually accessible via a side panel
in your laptop and held in place by screws on the bottom. Remove those screws, and then slide the drive out of the machine (as in photo 1 here). The drive will most likely be attached to a sled (photo 2, at left). Remove the screws that are
holding the drive in the sled, and remove the drive. Put the new drive where the old one was, and replace all of the screws in reverse order.
If you are reinstalling Windows from scratch, boot from your installation disc and go to town. On the other hand, if you want to reproduce your old data and programs exactly the way you had them before, consider using cloning software to make an exact copy of the old disk. Finally, clone your old (now external) drive to your new (now internal) drive, and boot normally. You're done.
